from the let's-discuss-this-rationally----I'll-start-by-setting-an-insane,-but- dept

If you asked most people what a single track is worth, most would answer with the going market price, which ranges from ~$0.79-$1.29. This is what the market has shown, for the most part, that it will bear. You veer too far away from the high end of that range and you'll find most people will opt for other music, cheaper music, or your music, fully detached from the high-end price tag.

"The Power of Money. What does money mean to you? How do you put a value on the things you care about? Is money the same thing as worth? Like it or not, money means that some people are rich and others poor, some considered successful, others failures. It determines your healthcare choices, education, clothes and how long you have the heating on for – whether you can have the things you want. But money is made up. Without our participation in the illusion, it's meaningless – in fact, if meaning equated to value, we would happily burn all the money tomorrow. Gaggle, of course, uses money. But Gaggle is an exercise in the power of other things as well – otherwise we wouldn't, and couldn't, exist. The Power of Generosity, Inventiveness, Courage. The Power of Flirting, Improvising, Blagging, Hard Work and Being Nice and Polite. The Power of Friendship, Faith, Obligation, Ambition, Anxiety…..Dreams. Without these Powers this track would not have been made. This song is precious. And yet, we're told that 'a single' is almost valueless. And that pisses us off. So we have done a budget of how much this single 'cost'. The many hours it took to write, arrange, compose, master; the expertise of all the musicians, technicians, designers, producers involved; the combination of all the Powers described above and more – we've totted it all up as best we can and… …we are putting this tune to market for the sum of £3000. The power of money? Let's see."

Well, good luck with that. It's been said time and time before, the customer has little to no interest in your fixed costs. This factor is completely irrelevant to purchase decisions, which are most often based on a more subjective perception of "value." While Gaggle may value their creation highly, it would be ignorant to assume that potential purchasers will value the track accordingly. In an era where creative output is at its highest, the sheer number of competing, cheaper options would be enough to bury this track's chances, even if Gaggle decided £5 was a reasonable amount to ask. (It isn't.)

Beyond that, there's some questions as to Gaggle's math. Are they intending for one sale to reimburse the entire creative effort? 10? 25? Wouldn't it be better to sell a few thousand copies at a price that people will actually pay, rather than pin the hopes of the collective on sales in the single digits? For that matter, wouldn't this scenario be more likely as well? And is it really fair to ask purchasers to support 22 musicians through the purchase of a single track? Aren't you running about 10-15 members over the upper limit for potentially successful bands that aren't named Broken Social Scene or Chicago?

But the issue at hand here really isn't £3000 or the perceived value of a single track versus the true cost of production. Gaggle's move here is a publicity stunt, primarily aimed at raising awareness of the band with a secondary aim of opening a dialogue about the value of artistic endeavors. All well and good except that it's rather hard to hold a discussion with a group whose opening gambit is to hurl themselves off the deep end while everyone else looks on in bemusement.

from the again? dept

This seems to happen every four years like clockwork during Presidential elections. Some musician gets upset about a politician he or she disagrees with, making use of his or her music during campaign rallies. This time around the candidate is Newt Gingrich, and the upset musician is songwriter and member of the band Survivor, Frank Sullivan, who co-wrote the song "Eye of the Tiger" which Gingrich has apparently been using during presidential campaigns:

The complaint states that the violation it alleges is intentional since Gingrich is "sophisticated and knowledgeable" concerning copyright laws.

That strikes me as interesting, because I would have to assume that the campaign has paid for standard ASCAP performance license (either that or the locations they use almost certainly have such a license). And if that's true, then Sullivan has no case. If the venue has a license, they can play whatever they want. Full stop. "Eye of the Tiger" is registered to ASCAP, so that's all that's needed. The campaign doesn't need permission of the copyright holder. The Chicago Sun-Times goes into more detail, where Sullivan insists this isn't political, he just doesn't like the song being used without him getting paid. Perhaps he should check his ASCAP statement. If he's not getting paid, he might want to take it up with them.

That same article also notes that Sullivan co-owns the copyright along with his song writing partner/bandmate, Jim Peterik, who seems to both (sorta, kinda) like Gingrich and not like legal actions:

“My wife is a big fan,” Peterik said. “I’m becoming a fan of Newt Gingrich. He has a mind of his own. He’s not a talking head. Originally, I didn’t like him, but look at the competition. He’s looking better and better.”

Peterik is not a party to the suit that Sullivan filed in U.S. District Court in Chicago. They share the copyright, but tend to stay out of each other’s way when it comes to cracking down on infringers.

”I hate suits,” Peterik said. “I hate being in court. I avoid that meticulously. When I [heard about the lawsuit on the radio Monday} I said I’m not surprised, but I’m surprised.”

I say this every time something like this comes up, but even if politicians can make use of such songs without getting permission from the artists, thanks to ASCAP/BMI/SESAC performance licenses, it still surprises me that the campaigns don't seek out musicians who support them in the first place to get their "okay" just to avoid embarrassing situations like this. Either way, it seems almost certain that this lawsuit is going nowhere fast.

from the sing-it dept

Well, well. It looks like the ongoing protests are inspiring some extra creativity from some musicians. A bunch of people have been sending around The Day The LOLcats Died, an obviously play on a song you all know:

from the wtf,-i-wanted-an-iphone dept

Aaron DeOliveira points us to an amusing Christmas to New Year's week diversion in the story of the song, WTF?! I Wanted An iPhone!!! (warning, potentially NSFW, if your work place doesn't like people singing curses). Beyond being entertaining and amusing, the story behind it is a cool case study in how creativity comes from all sorts of strange sources online. The story begins with comedy writer Jon Hendren, being bored on Christmas Eve & Christmas, and playing around with Twitter search, doing searches on terms seeking particularly entitled and angry tweets from kids who didn't get "what they wanted" on Christmas -- with "what they wanted" being defined as an iPhone, an iPad or a car. Hendren then started retweeting the ones he found:

That, itself, started to go viral, at which point singer Jonathan Mann, who's made quite a name for himself writing, recording and releasing a song a day ever since January 1 of 2009, picked up on the story and wrote the song linked above (his 1089th song, if you were wondering). The song basically takes some of the "best" of the entitled tweets and produces a fun little ditty (again, potentially NSFW):

Now, this whole thing is silly (or, potentially, a bit sickening when you look at how entitled some of those kids feel), but it really does demonstrate a few different concepts, all wrapped up in one nice holiday package:

Creativity comes from all sorts of strange sources

Online, collaboration can happen without people even realizing it (and that's cool)

The ability to create, promote and distribute content just keeps getting easier and easier

from the this-counts-as-a-step-forward? dept

I can't quite figure out which is more amusing: the fact that record labels are just now thinking that maybe it makes sense to release songs for sale the same time they're sent to radio stations, or that it's seen as newsworthy as a strategy to "beat piracy." I mean, it's a good sign that the labels are finally realizing that a lack of availability is often a driver for unauthorized copies making the rounds, but the fact that they're only coming to this conclusion in 2011 suggests just how out of touch these labels are with the world. People were making this point over a decade ago.

from the well-that's-compelling dept

The WSJ is reporting that Apple is getting set to announce that the Beatles' music is finally available on iTunes, something that tons of online music stores have been trying to offer for years and years without any luck. Given that Steve Jobs allegedly named his company "Apple" after the Beatles' "Apple Corp." -- it's been a particular goal of Jobs to get their music into his store (even with the legal fights that have been had over the name). Either way, while I'm sure Steve Jobs will make this out to be the most amazing thing since the invention of electrical power, it's kind of worth pointing out that the Beatles' music has been widely available online for years via file sharing options. Putting this in perspective, all this is really doing is giving people a chance to pay money for music they've probably already been getting for free. Suddenly, it doesn't seem like such a big deal, and makes you wonder what the hell took so long.

from the a-bit-late-there dept

Reader Tim DiPaula alerts us to the news that folks singer Jake Holmes is suing Jimmy Page for copyright infringement, claiming that the Led Zeppelin song "Dazed and Confused" is a copy of his own song, of the same name, recorded two years earlier. The TMZ link above has clips from both songs, which certainly have some pretty serious similarities. But what's really amazing, of course, is that Holmes recorded his song in 1967, and Zeppelin did their song in 1969. And Holmes is just noticing now? TMZ notes that copyright law has a three year statute of limitation, saying that this lawsuit can only cover damages from the last three years. But, of course, as with all things copyright law related, it might not be that simple. The courts have been somewhat divided on this, but some interpret the law to say exactly what TMZ says -- that it will only cover infringement from the past three years. However, others have interpreted it to mean that it's only three years from the last infringing act. So as long as infringement has been happening all along... some courts will cover that entire period. Of course, you might think that regardless of the statute of limitations issues, Page has a pretty damn good laches claim. Forty plus years to bring the lawsuit? Yeah, the courts might not like that very much.

from the infringing-or-not? dept

Shocklee points us to an awesome little app that lets you type in whatever lyrics (or, well, words) you want, hit play, and whatever you type will be sung for you, using clips from various famous songs. It's a really fun little app (though, I was amused that they have no clip for the word "lyrics" despite the service being all about lyrics) and can get pretty addictive. In fact, if you want to hear this entire post sung outloud via this system, just click here (please note, this will take a really long time to load, but it's totally worth it). However, like with many other cool music projects, I'm left wondering whether or not some would consider this to be copyright infringement. All of the clips are tiny -- one word, or in many cases, less than a full word, but they do seem to come from various popular and well-known songs. It's not hard to identify some of them. I have no idea if the company behind this service cleared all the licenses (it's possible), but if that's the case, you'd have to imagine that this service would get ridiculously expensive very quickly. If a simple lyric of, say, 8 words, involves a dozen clips, with royalties needing to be paid for each, such a service would quickly become impossible. Doesn't it say something when copyright law would effectively outlaw an awesome and fun app like this one?

from the short-term-thinking dept

Ethorad was the first of a few to write in pointing to an article over at the BBC, highlighting how old songs are finding new life and new sales after showing up in a commercial -- or being used on TV during a popular event. In other words, getting your music more widely heard leads to more ways to make money. That, of course, should be obvious. And yet, why is it that so many in the industry are trying to make it so much harder to get music heard by putting up tollbooths at every stop? You have the RIAA/Soundexchange working overtime to put an additional tax on radio play and you have ASCAP/BMI trying to get fees for everything, from the 30 second previews online to ringtones. Of course, the more you put a toll on such things, the less the songs are used, the less they're promoted and the less opportunity there is to increase sales. It's really amazing sometimes that these big organizations don't seem to comprehend the basic idea of a "promotion" and how that helps sales.